Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/287

Rh rained in the night, but cleared up in the morning; those dense, dark masses of cloud were penetrated, rent asunder by the flashing sunbeams; and bold, abrupt shadows, and heavenly lights played among the yet bolder, more craggy, and more picturesque hills. What an animated scene it was! and I was once more alone with America, with my beloved, my great and beautiful sister, with the sybil at whose knee I sate listening and glancing up to her with looks full of love. Oh, what did she not communicate to me that day, that morning full of inspiration, as amid her tears she drank in the heavenly light, and flung those dark shadows, like a veil, back from her countenance, that it might be only the more fully illumined by the Divine light! Never shall I forget that morning!

They came again and again, during the morning those dark clouds, spreading night over those deep abysses, but again they yielded, again they gave place to the sun, which finally prevailed, alone, triumphant and shone over the Mississippi and its world in the most beautiful summer splendour; and the inner light in my soul conversed with the outward light. It was glorious!

The farther we advanced the more strangely and fantastically were the cliffs on the shore splintered and riven, representing the most astonishing imagery. Half way up, probably four or five hundred feet above the river, these hills were covered with wood now golden with the hue of autumn, and above that rising, as if directly out of it, naked, ruin-like crags of rich red-brown, representing fortifications, towers, half-demolished walls, as of ancient, magnificent strongholds and castles. The castle-ruins of the Rhine are small things in comparison with these gigantic remains of primeval ages; when men were not, but the Titans of primeval nature, Megatheriums, Mastodons, and Ichthyosaurians rose up from the waters, and wandered alone over the earth.